We all remember Eli Wallach, who died this week, for his roles in “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” and “The Magnificent Seven” and mourned his passing at age 98.
But I had forgotten, until I had MeTV on tonight, that Wallach had played the frosty villain Mr. Freeze in the 1960s “Batman” TV series.
Wallach was the third actor to play the role, following George Sanders and Otto Preminger.
Thanks for entertaining us, Mr. Wallach.
Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.
Hollywood reporter Nikki Finke recently scooped the rest of the entertainment press with a list purporting to detail Warner Bros. and DC’s plans for big-screen superhero movies in the near future.
Here’s the list:
• May 2016 – Batman v Superman
• July 2016 – Shazam
• Xmas 2016 – Sandman
• May 2017 – Justice League
• July 2017 – Wonder Woman
• Xmas 2017 – Flash and Green Lantern team-up
• May 2018 – Man Of Steel 2
Nope. Not happening.
I mean, in many ways, I wish it would. As satisfying as Marvel’s big-screen universe is, I’d like to see DC comics heroes – the most accessible and familiar heroes in the world, in many ways – finally achieve lift off on screen.
Last year’s “Man of Steel” had so many things wrong with it, and with writer David Goyer and others behind the scenes who are plainly ashamed of superhero names, colorful costumes, origins and storylines, I don’t have much hope for future movies in the series.
And in particular I doubt that the studio can pull this off.
Lookit: WB and DC have only just gotten rolling on “BvsS.” How quickly can they turn around “Shazam,” which is supposed to follow the May 2016 release of “BvsS” by a couple of months?
And if they haven’t been able to figure out a big-screen “Wonder Woman” or “Green Lantern,” how can they pull off an oddity like “Sandman?”
Not to mention the whole “seven movies released within two years” thing. That’s a feat that I’m not sure even Marvel, with its assembly-line methods, could pull off.
I’ll go see whatever DC movies get released in the coming years, no doubt. But I’m afraid I’ll find them as lacking as “Green Lantern” and “Man of Steel.”
And I sure don’t think we’ll see one every few months.
It gets a bit silly, all the outrage on the Internet.
But then again, people keep saying stupid things.
No matter if they’re fanboys acting like assholes on the topic of female fans or they’re … well, I don’t know how to describe “Man of Steel” screenwriter David S. Goyer, who was all over the web today for really stupid comments he made in a recent interview.
You see, today was supposed to be DC’s big day, announcing the title of that “Man of Steel” sequel coming out – maybe – in a couple of years. It’s “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” a title so stupid it immediately inspired exactly the opposite reaction that DC must have wanted.
Not only doesn’t the title – really, it’s just too stupid for me to write again – make anyone think that Warner Bros. and DC have their shit together in their efforts to be more like Marvel and create a big-screen universe.
It sounds obvious, even desperate and grasping. I’ve seen it lampooned today as a courtroom drama and Lifetime movie.
Compare that reaction to the Comic Con reveal of “Avengers: Age of Ultron.” Fandamonium.
Anyway, Warners and DC might have only just begun regretting their title decision when Goyer, who as writer of most of DC’s very uneven efforts to bring its iconic superheroes to life, was widely quoted for some boneheaded remarks he made in a recent Scriptnotes podcast.
First, Goyer insulted the longtime Marvel hero She-Hulk – who, admittedly, does have a silly name – by noting that she was clearly superhero porn and served only as someone to have sex with the Hulk.
I wonder, did Goyer know before today that the characters of Hulk and She-Hulk were cousins? I’m assuming he does now.
Then Goyer went on to say an incredibly stupid thing that shows just how tone-deaf he is.
In talking about Martian Manhunter, a long-established character made popular on the “Justice League” and “Justice League Unlimited” animated series a few years ago, Goyer made fun of the character and asked how many people had heard of him.
Of course, most of those in attendance had. Probably surprised by this, Goyer then said:
“How many people that raised their hands have ever been laid?”
Really?
In one utterance, Goyer shows his ignorance about Martian Manhunter – a major character from the ONLY truly successful iteration of DC characters in the past decade – and also insults comic book movie fans.
You know, the people who pay to see his movies.
Ross Lincoln summed up Goyer’s attitude nicely on his “The Escapist” blog: Goyer and his partners at Warner Bros. are ashamed they’re making superhero movies.
Think about it. Nolan’s Batman movies, which had some strong points, dwindled to awkward absurdity through Goyer’s scripts. “Man of Steel” was awful. Hell, it couldn’t even see fit to actually call its hero Superman.
It’s sad, really, that three quarters of a century of great characters and stories are squandered in such hands.
So everybody online has already pointed this out, but the release yesterday of a heavily filtered photo of Ben Affleck as Batman from the “Man of Steel” sequel sure looked like Frank Miller’s Dark Knight.
Photo above.
And the original art.
There’s some amazing fan art out there these days. Some of it is from professionals who also happen to be fans.
Graphic designer Khoa Ho has released a series of moody black-and-white designs highlighting the origins and/or secret identities of Batman, Superman, Iron Man and the like.
Here’s his website.
This will really only whet your appetite for more Dark Knight.
DC Comics is celebrating Batman’s 75th anniversary this year – like it marked Superman’s 75th anniversary last year – with some cool stuff, including some short films.
The latest is comic book artist Darwyn Cook’s tribute to Batman Beyond, the sequel series to the original Bruce Timm Batman animated series.
Kevin Conroy and Will Friedle return to voice the roles of aging Bruce Wayne and young Terry McGinness, his protege.
Cool action, cool shots of the former Bat-family costumes …
And, at the end, a tribute to a bunch of former movie/TV Batman portrayals and actors.
Good stuff.
I’m pretty sure Detective Comics No. 367 is not the most rare comic book in history. But it oughta be. I’ll tell you why in a minute.
This issue of Detective came out in September 1967, during an interesting time for Batman. DC had been plugging along with the character since the Golden Age by this point, but Batman saw a revitalization after the 1966 “Batman” TV series.
By September 1967, however, the show was waning. It would hang on until the spring of 1968, when the show was gone and Batman was left to his own devices.
The comic almost always – like a lot of DC, even in the years of improbable plots – had beautiful artwork. This cover wasn’t among the best – it’s credited to longtime DCers Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson – but it was pretty unusual in that it offered a jigsaw puzzle for readers to assemble to try to figure out that issue’s villain.
Here’s my question along the lines of rare comic books: I wonder how many kids would have cut up the cover of this issue to assemble the jigsaw puzzle?
I didn’t have this issue, but I know I wouldn’t have been able to resist the temptation to do so.
And thus would have been lost another copy.
It’s no surprise, but “Gotham” – the recently announced Fox series about the early, pre-Batman series of Bruce Wayne – would appear to have a “Smallville” problem.
Now, I watched “Smallville,” on and off, and enjoyed some of it. I faded during the seasons when the show seemed to revolve around Clark’s girlfriend, Lana Lang, but always enjoyed the show’s treatment of young Clark and Lex and the Kent family.
Having said that, we now know it’s not impossible to do a good TV series about a superhero on a TV budget. “Arrow,” in its second season, has brought to the small screen more comic book authenticity, more characters, more action, than “Smallville” did in its entire run.
So here’s my concern about “Gotham.” It’s utterly and completely based on the “Smallville” model.
The premise of the series is that the stories will begin with the killing of Thomas and Martha Wayne and the investigation – and police career – of Jim Gordon, who begins the series as a young cop and, presumably, ends up as the police commissioner we know.
Along the way, we’ll meet younger versions of the Penguin and other characters, including good-cop-gone-bad Harvey Bullock.
And we’ve already seen the young actors playing Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle, who will grow up to be Catwoman.
The two look right for the part and look to have charisma.
But here are my fears for “Gotham”:
The stories might go nowhere. With eight or ten years to burn through before the ultimate moment when Bruce puts on the mask, will we see 19 or 20 episodes a season acting as filler before those “aha” moments like Bruce seeing a bat and realizing it has some strange role in his destiny? (I think I just wrote the first season finale’s last scene.)
The acting – particularly that of the young actors – could be awful. Remember how wooden the guy who played Aquaman was on “Smallville?” I really, really hope they vet all the players.
The foreshadowing and Easter eggs could be fun or they could be painful. How many Halloween costumes are we going to see that suggest the ultimate look of the characters? Even “Arrow” had a thudding moment in its first season with a reference to Black Canary’s fishnet stockings.
Will it compel us to care about young Bruce? The idea of prequels – curse you, George Lucas – just leaves me cold. An extended look at a character before he or she gets interesting? Sure, sign me up.
The ending might fizzle like “Smallville.” This is what I worry about the most. In its final seasons, “Smallville” was actually building to a compelling climax for Clark’s story. But the series seemed so averse to showing Clark in the Superman outfit that … well, it never really did. We got a quick shot of Clark’s face with some red and blue below his chin and a long shot of Superman flying. That’s it.
It’ll be a while before we know if “Gotham” is more like “Arrow” than “Smallville.” In the meantime, we can only hope.
I come to praise Les Daniels, not to bury him. But it turns out one of my favorite authors of comic book histories died and I didn’t even hear the sad news.
Daniels – who died in November 2011 at age 68 – is one of those authors to whose work I have returned again and again.
And no wonder. While he wrote fiction, his non-fiction work lines a shelf near by bedside.
In 1971, he wrote one of the early serious histories of comic books, “Comix: A History of the Comic Book in America.” He followed this up with some of the most readable “official” histories of comic book publishers and characters in print, including “Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World’s Greatest Comics” in 1991, “DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World’s Favorite Comic Book Heroes” in 1995, and what I consider his best modern-day work, a three-volume history of DC Comics’ Trinity, Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman.
These three”Complete History” volumes were published in the late 1990s and early 2000s and, in addition to his clear and concise writing, feature some of the best design in comic book histories to that day. These volumes include covers by Chip Kidd, a star of the book design world.
Daniels was also an author of historical fiction and historical fiction with a supernatural bent.
There’s so much online – and so much crap online – about comic books these days, Daniels’ work seems – and is -authoritative and comprehensive and first-rate by comparison.
RIP Mr. Daniels.
So Warner Bros. has announced they’ve cast Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor in the “Man of Steel” sequel, the one with Ben Affleck as Batman. The one that’s called … well, we might know the official title around the time of Comic Con.
So Eisenberg as Luthor (matchup in the Entertainment Weekly illustration above.
What do we think of this?
Eisenberg will always be the sarcastic nerd hero of “Zombieland” and the sarcastic nerd billionaire-in-the-making anti-hero of “The Social Network” to me.
Do I want them to bring Kevin Spacey or Gene Hackman back? No.
But my image (and aural impression) of Lex Luthor just might always be the Bruce Timm version, voice by Clancy Brown, from the animated “Superman” and “Justice League” series.
I’m not sure Eisenberg can top that.
And Jeremy Irons as Alred Pennyworth? That’s fine. Nobody will top Michael Caine.
Here’s the WB press release:
Warner Bros. Pictures announced today that Jesse Eisenberg has been set to star as Lex Luthor and Jeremy Irons will play Alfred in the upcoming Zack Snyder untitled Superman/Batman film. The dual announcement was made today by Greg Silverman, President, Creative Development and Worldwide Production, and Sue Kroll, President, Worldwide Marketing and International Distribution, Warner Bros. Pictures.
Snyder stated, “Lex Luthor is often considered the most notorious of Superman’s rivals, his unsavory reputation preceding him since 1940. What’s great about Lex is that he exists beyond the confines of the stereotypical nefarious villain. He’s a complicated and sophisticated character whose intellect, wealth and prominence position him as one of the few mortals able to challenge the incredible might of Superman. Having Jesse in the role allows us to explore that interesting dynamic, and also take the character in some new and unexpected directions.”
The director added, “As everyone knows, Alfred is Bruce Wayne’s most trusted friend, ally and mentor, a noble guardian and father figure. He is an absolutely critical element in the intricate infrastructure that allows Bruce Wayne to transform himself into Batman. It is an honor to have such an amazingly seasoned and gifted actor as Jeremy taking on the important role of the man who mentors and guides the guarded and nearly impervious façade that encapsulates Bruce Wayne.”
Snyder’s film stars Henry Cavill, reprising his role as Superman/Clark Kent, Ben Affleck as Batman/Bruce Wayne, and Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman/Diana Prince. The film also reunites “Man of Steel” stars Amy Adams, Laurence Fishburne and Diane Lane.
The new film is currently being written by Chris Terrio, from a screenplay by David S. Goyer. Charles Roven and Deborah Snyder are producing, with Benjamin Melniker, Michael E. Uslan, Wesley Coller, David S. Goyer and Geoff Johns serving as executive producers.
The film is set to open worldwide on May 6, 2016, and is based on Superman characters created by Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster, Batman characters created by Bob Kane, and Wonder Woman created by William Moulton Marston, appearing in comic books published by DC Entertainment.
keithroysdon 